The Python 3.11 package contains an older version of the Python development environment. This is only needed for building specific programs in BLFS that have not updated their build systems to support Python-3.12.1 (e.g Firefox-115.6.0, Thunderbird-115.6.1, seamonkey-2.53.18, and qtwebengine-5.15.17).
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Do NOT install this package if you are not installing one of the above programs.
Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the books.
Download (HTTP): https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.11.1/Python-3.11.1.tar.xz
Download MD5 sum: 4efe92adf28875c77d3b9b2e8d3bc44a
Download size: 19 MB
Estimated disk space required: 301 MB
Estimated build time: 1.1 SBU (Using parallelism=4)
SQLite-3.45.0 (required if building firefox or thunderbird)
Install Python 3.11 by running the following commands:
CXX="/usr/bin/g++" \
./configure --prefix=/opt/python3.11 \
--disable-shared \
--with-system-expat &&
make
Since this package is only used in very limited situations, tests are not recommended.
Now, as the root user:
make install
CXX="/usr/bin/g++" ./configure ...: Avoid an annoying message during configuration.
--prefix=/opt/python3.11: This installs python 3.11 into /opt in order to avoid conflicts with the system version of python, and allows for easy removal/isolation once programs update to python3.12 or later.
--disable-shared: This switch disables building shared libraries. Since all the packages that need python-3.11 have built in modules and don't directly link to python, it is safe to turn off shared library support.
--with-system-expat: This switch enables linking against the system version of Expat.